


You Are Not Alone

by menami



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode Style, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Year That Never Was, Season Style
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-18 19:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13687830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menami/pseuds/menami
Summary: Jack spent so long looking for the Doctor, a shitty year that didn't even happen anyway isn't going to make him deny an offer as good as "come with us." But Martha's left, and the Doctor's started to look tired -- not as tired, mind you, as he did when during that year. But it's no use dwelling on that anymore, the Doctor insists. There's all kinds of people to save, including Mariposa Forte, a citizen from a strange version of 2018 London who's determined to figure out what's going on with the tall stranger and his strapping friend who look as if they've seen hell.





	1. Chapter 1

The Doctor watched Martha’s back disappear behind the doors, and finally released a breath held much too long. He watched the entrance to the TARDIS for a moment, holding onto a hope he understood was pointless. It was probably better this way, he told himself. In fact, it was probably better he do it alone. He leaned into the console, closing his eyes with a prolonged exhale.

The doors swung open as Jack called back to someone outside, his words almost indistinguishable but it appeared to be some kind of goodbye. The Doctor immediately pushed himself back into a more distinguished position, putting on his best carefree-smile. He’d nearly forgotten about Jack in the moment.

“Alright, I’ve said my goodbyes and grabbed a couple of things I figured I’d need, so I’m all ready to go.” He dropped a heavy suitcase on the grating next to the preserved hand. _I really should put that somewhere else_ , the Doctor noted, flexing his own right hand, revelling in the way the joints moved like a well-oiled machine again. He’d never take a youthful body for granted again.

“So, Jack. Where should we go? I’m thinking I’ll give the randomizer a go. Been a good long time since I let the TARDIS decide -- although, not that long, really. She doesn’t listen to me all that often, does she?”

“What about Martha? You’re not planning on leaving her here, are you?”

The Doctor bit his lip. “She’s not coming. She left. Of her own accord, of course. I wouldn’t kick her out. But I imagine she’s had enough.”

Jack hopped into the leather padded seat. “After a year telling your story she’s just leaving you behind?”

“It’s not that simple, Jack. She’s got her reasons. And besides -- there are worse ways to say goodbye.” He threw a lever forwards and set about steering the TARDIS in a way to break off the conversation, and it seemed to work, as Jack didn’t bother digging further into the statement. The Doctor flicked a switch on a box that didn't quite match the rest of the ship -- the randomizer, installed once to make the path their ship took unpredictable. If it was realistically randomized, about 99% of the time he would end up in dead space, but he ignored that and the obvious fact that the sentient being that was his ship was just grabbing at an opportunity to choose their destination. He just knew, as he threw the landing gear and the TARDIS wheezed in her descent, that wherever she took him would be interesting, it would be new, it would be…

“London,” Jack said incredulously. “London, again? This is just a bit to the east -- what kind of randomizer is that?”

The Doctor finished locking the door behind him. “Well, realistically, it is _random,_ so, albeit unlikely, it is possible.” He turned to take in the sights. “But- this is not the London I know. Something’s wrong.”

“The streets are all empty,” Jack pointed out. He wasn’t wrong, not a single person lined the streets. And neither did any living thing. There were no trees, no shrubbery, no grass, and only the barest suggestion of weeds poking through the cracks in the sidewalk. But the place didn’t look abandoned. Sure, it looked different. Something was off, on the streets lined with concrete apartment buildings and brick townhouses, something the Doctor couldn’t put his finger on.

The Doctor hummed. “Jack, do you taste that? In the air?”

“For once, yeah. It’s sharp and -- and electric. It’s like when you lick a battery.” He chewed on the thought for a second. “Or the taste on your tongue when you’re electrocuted.”

The Doctor didn’t tear his eyes from the yellow-gray sky. It wasn’t unnatural, but in a place like this it certainly felt like it was. “Do you make a habit of that?”

“Getting electrocuted? It happens, from time to time. Not much point being careful when there’s no real repercussion.”

The Doctor turned to look upon the Captain, his hands in his pockets and his head tilted up to the sky. “I meant licking batteries. Why would you do that?”

“Says the guy who eats dirt to figure out what planet he’s on.” Jack grinned his way, and the Doctor rolled his eyes.

“Look there’s a very good reason for that…” he trailed off, turning towards a nearby townhouse. A door was open just a crack, and a portion of a face was staring out at them. “Seems we’re not alone.”

The door opened wider, and a young black woman stood in the doorway, her teeth gritted and eyes wide in disbelief.

“What are you two doing?”

The Doctor looked around him. “Er, nothing, I’d say. Just sort of standing here.”

Jack sauntered back to the Doctor’s side. “So there is life here after all. Hey, you! Why are the streets so empty?”

The woman looked up at the sky. “It’s starting. Get inside! Quick!”

The Doctor followed her gaze to the sky. Something was falling, and quickly. Jack jumped into his side as a ball of flame struck the ground right next to him. The Doctor caught him awkwardly, eyes still on the sky, watching more fire rain from above.

He grabbed Jack’s wrist securely, and dashed for the woman’s open door. She was waving them furiously in, clearly impatient to go back to ignoring what was happening outside. His coat narrowly avoided being singed as they crossed the threshold and the woman slammed the heavy door behind them.

“The hell were you guys thinking?”

The Doctor pushed past her into what looked to be a living room through an open door. A large picture window opened up to the empty street, through it he glanced out on the now fiery picture, drops of flame raining on the pavement and buildings, and the TARDIS standing unharmed in the middle of it.

“So _that’s_ what was off. There’s nothing flammable out there. Everything’s made to endure this.” He spun on his heel to face the shell-shocked woman. “So, the sky’s raining fire. How long has that been happening? What do you know about that?”

She was speechless, so Jack stepped in. “Hey. I’m Jack Harkness. This is the Doctor.” He held out his hand with a sly grin.

The Doctor shot Jack a look, but if that was any attempt at flirting, she didn’t pick up on it. She didn’t even take his hand. “I-I’m Posie.”

“Well, hello then, Posie.” The Doctor heaved himself onto the sill and gestured to the destruction raining down behind them. “So. What’s up with that?”

“How do you not know?”

“We’re not from around here,” The Doctor explained, and hoped it was believable.

“You sound sorta Scottish,” Posie ventured. “Do you not have television in Scotland? Any sort of news outlet?”

“Oh yeah, we’re from a rural town in Scotland, yes. Very rural.”

“Amish, in fact,” Jack jumped in. “We’re... Amish.” The Doctor had to restrain himself from letting out a long, exasperated sigh.

“Right. Aren’t there like... rules about leaving Amish communities?”

“You would think that, of course! Because you _aren’t_ Amish.”

 _“Anyway,”_ the Doctor broke in, determined not to let Jack finish digging his own grave, “yes, we’re Amish, and we’re not from around here. What’s up with the fire?”

“It started around fifteen years ago. Every once in awhile, fire just rains from the sky. At first it was just London, but over time other places started catching it too. Somewhere in the southern US it hasn’t stopped since it started two years ago.”

“Any idea of what’s causing it?”

Posie shrugged, falling back into her couch. “Global warming? That’s what the experts are saying.”

The Doctor chewed on that thought. “That doesn’t make sense. Global warming shouldn’t be this bad yet. And it doesn’t make sense, either.”

Jack whistled from the kitchen table behind the couch, and held up a newspaper for the Doctor to see. It was April, 2018.

“I need a sample of the fire.” He hopped to his feet, Posie watching him carefully, as he grabbed the newspaper from Jack, threw the window open, and stuck it into the firestorm.

Posie jumped up immediately, pulling him from the window and slamming it closed. “What are you-”

The Doctor held the burning roll of paper close to his face, one brow cocked up and his nostrils flaring. “Hm! Hm, indeed.”

Posie made a exasperated hand gesture, before grabbing the newspaper from him, slamming it onto the tile floor, and crushing the small flame under her lounger. “What are you trying to do, burn the place down?”

The Doctor turned again to the window, snapping on his glasses. “I can’t see it, but it’s definitely strange. They must be very, very small, or burning up completely in the atmosphere -- but then, that wouldn’t make sense, the fire isn’t very hot.”

“Hey! Doctor Pinstripes! What the _hell_ are you talking about?” Jack snorted as the Doctor turned with a look of confusion.

“It’s just… the Doctor. And I’m talking about the things falling on your city.”

“The fireballs?”

“No, the things the fire is burning up. Fire can’t just exist on it own, something has to be burning for there to be fire. And the things burning are -- well, improbable for early 21st century Britain to have in its atmosphere.”

She knit her brow. “France.”

“Excuse me?” The Doctor questioned, his attention still out the window.

“You said Britain. We’re in France.”

The Doctor froze. “This is London, right?” The streets looked right, if a little strange. The walled in gardens, the thin and empty roads, and the long rows of connected townhouses.

“Yeah. London, France. The isle hasn’t been called Britain in hundreds of years. Is this some weird Amish thing?”

The Doctor locked eyes with her, but the confusion in her expression was genuine. And his could only mirror hers. “This is wrong, this is very, very wrong- Come on, Jack! We’ve got to get back to the TARDIS -- _now.”_

The Doctor headed for the door and Jack stood up, seemingly eager to get moving. Posie froze up, looking between the Doctor and Jack. Jack just smiled at her. “This is when it starts to get fun.”

“No, what? Wait-” She grabbed at the Doctor’s wrist. “You can’t go out there.”

“I’ll be fast. I’m just going over to the blue box across the road.”

Posie’s fist grew tighter around the Doctor’s arm. “That fire may not be so hot, but it catches and spreads, _fast._ At least two people are found burnt in the streets after the firestorms, they all said the same things. You may confuse the hell out of me, but I’m not letting you two leave. Besides -- that box is made of _wood._ You can kiss it goodbye.”

“So you’re saying you just wait here for the skies to clear up?” Jack crossed his arms. “How long does that take?”

Posie slackened her grip, a mercy the Doctor was grateful for. She must’ve been hiding some toned muscles under her loose pyjama shirt. “Could be minutes. Could be days. The longest I’ve waited was three nights, two days.”

“There’s no way we’re waiting here that long. Right, Doctor?” He gave the Doctor a knowing glance, but the Doctor was focused on Posie, just a few inches shorter than him, with an insisting glare that revealed more than it should.

“Oh, Posie. Pos-pos-posie. What’s that short for- Josephine? It’s weird, how you can get a straightforward name like _Posie_ from something as pompous as _Josephine._ ”

“It’s short for Mariposa. Mariposa Forte.” She pursed her lips, her brow still furrowed in frustration and confusion.

“Well, well, Mar-i- _pos_ -a, I think I like your attitude. Say, this house is a bit big for one person, isn’t it?”

Posie sighed outwardly. “The upstairs is a separate apartment.”

“Well, this floor is still pretty big for just you.”

“I live with my mum and my boyfriend. They’re- they’re at the store. At least, they were. They should be, it’d take too long for them to get back here, and phone service goes straight to hell during these storms, so it’s not like I can give them a ring, but-”

The Doctor leaned forward just a bit to meet her eyes. “So you’re worried about them.”

She backed up, looking anywhere but those large brown eyes. “So? Yeah. Yeah, I am. I’ve seen people die out there. And I’m not about to see you two die out there. Doesn’t matter if you’re literally insane or not.”

“Doctor-?”

“Not now, Jack.” He leaned back on his heels. “It’s something else, right Posie? You saw something more.”

Posie met his eyes suddenly, powerfully, her dark irises locked in a strong glare.

“Doctor, this is serious! Something’s happening across the street!”

The Doctor stood in her stare for a moment, then inhaled sharply before moving quickly past her to look out the window. The house across the road, with the TARDIS just in front of the garden wall, now had a large hole in it’s window, and from the movement of the drapery, the Doctor knew something was going on. “Mariposa, I think your neighbors are under attack.”

“What?” Posie shoved herself between the Doctor and Jack.

“Now will you let us leave?” Jack asked, fixing her with the most serious expression he’d made all day. “We can help them.”

“The tunnels. They built tunnels to connect the basements- just in case. Come on!” She pushed off the windowsill, turning around so rapidly that her ponytail of small braids nearly slapped Jack in the face. The Doctor took after her, down a stairwell into a mostly empty basement. She turned the deadbolt on the door and ran down a concrete tunnel with metal supports, which branched out in the middle, with signs the Doctor didn’t even bother to read. It was a short dash until they reached another door, bolted shut with the number 42 on it.

Posie slammed her fist against the door. “Allie! Allie, are you okay?”

A muffled scream sounded from above them.

“She can’t hear you. Scooch!” The Doctor pushed her lightly out of the way, brandishing his sonic screwdriver. Using its most basic function, he pointed it at the lock and his sharp features were briefly illuminated in blue, as the metal wand chirped its song.

The door unlocked and creaked open.

Posie stood still for a moment. “You’re not Amish.”

“What? This is a screwdriver. The Amish have screwdrivers, right?” He waggled the wand between his finger and thumb.

Another scream, clearer this time, reminded them of why they were there. The Doctor stormed through the basement, this one featuring a comfortable-looking entertainment room, and up the stairs into a near-identical apartment to Posie’s. The living room was to his left, through an archway, and the kitchen was to the right. His eyes caught sight of a large red box, but he ignored in in favor of the cowering woman. She looked older than him, though that was unlikely, and she was hiding in a corner of her now-ruined living room, while a burning metal sphere darted around the room. The Doctor stopped in front of her, arms spread wide and screwdriver chirping wildly.

“Posie, who are these people?”

“Th-they’re help, Allie,” Posie explained, poorly, trying to help Posie to her feet and away from the living room.

“Jack, in the kitchen, the fire blanket! Quickly!” Jack nodded from his place in the doorway, rushing to the red box. It opened with a solid bang; Jack scooped it up and passed it to the the Doctor, who unfurled it and leaped at the burning sphere.

Allie screeched as the Doctor wrestled with the machine. It was strong, attempting to dart out of his grip, but as soon as the flames were extinguished he found himself able to deactivate it with a few spurts of the sonic screwdriver. It went lax in his grip, leaving him sprawled on the charred floor.

The room was quiet, until a man came charging down the stairs. “What is going on- _oh, my God.”_

The Doctor assessed the damage. It wasn’t _that_ bad, and all the fire had already died out, and nobody had been hurt. Ultimately, this was one of his better jobs. He sat up, the dead machine in his hands, and began to study it in his lap.

Allie had run into what must’ve been her husband’s arms, and was sobbing. Posie seemed to trying as gently as possible to explain what happened. Jack considered jumping in, but even he didn’t know what to say. He stepped over a shattered vase to lean in next to the Doctor.

“It’s alien. Very much so. But, with hints of some technology that really doesn’t make sense for this time. Human… but not yet. I’ll have to run some scans on it from the TARDIS.”

“If we can get out there,” Jack supplied.

“Well, we both know you can.” The Doctor smiled thinly at his companion. “But let’s use that as a last resort. We’ve already proven ourselves weird enough to these people.”

Jack nodded. “So we wait, then?”

“I guess so!” He stood up, cracking his back and dusting ash off his coat, with a sly grin. “Won’t that be fun?”

 

Jack felt, for lack of a better word, bored. He sat in a slightly burnt loveseat, his eyes on the ever-raging storm, his coat pulled comfortably around his torso. The dead sphere-thing lay in his lap, the Doctor’s long-fingered handprints still marking negative space into the top layer of charring. His focus had been dragged from the machinery to the woman -- Allie, Jack recalled. She’d been burned, and as the Doctor tended to her wounds he dragged her out of shock the way he knew best; by rambling on about thing that would make no sense to anyone who wasn’t the Doctor himself. Even with his rants being as confusing as they were, there was something about his voice, the way he moved from one weird scientific theory to another, that made it feel like everything was going to be alright. That the Doctor had this under control.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” The Doctor said as he plopped into the seat next to Jack, folding one leg over the other and taking the metal sphere from him. “None of this makes sense. I’ve got to get to the TARDIS.”

Jack snorted. “That’s reassuring.”

“There’s so much that’s _wrong._ This looks like London. Smells like London. All signs point to theis being London, on the British Isles, in the continent of Europe on the planet Earth. But look at this!” He passed Jack what he assumed was a phone. “It’s an iPhone 7, by the way. T’s not the latest model, but that’s what phones look a few years your future- or your past, depending on what you refer to as your present. And-”

“It confirms that we are apparently in France,” Jack jumped in, looking through the Maps app. “There’s some other weird things, here, too. Australia has a bunch of countries. And I don’t remember the United States being quite that big. No Canada?”

 _“Exactly.”_ The Doctor bounced his leg, working his fingertips around the outside of the sphere. “We’re not in an alternate universe. I’d feel that. So I don’t get it. Because, I’ve seen London in 2018. This is _not_ it.”

“Time can be rewritten?” Jack guessed.

“Yeah. Yeah, it can. But something this harsh? And it still doesn’t explain the fire raining down, unless that’s some new anti-paradox measure the universe has implemented since I last checked. And, it doesn’t explain something else.” The Doctor sat up with a hissing breath. “It doesn’t feel like Earth. Like, yeah, it looks like Earth, it smells like Earth, everyone and everything is telling me that it is Earth. But it doesn’t _feel_ like Earth, in here.” He tapped absently at his temple.

“Right. So it’s not Earth, then? It’s some weird pseudo-Earth?”

“I don’t know! The sonic says it’s earth, but a more accurate scan from the TARDIS may do us some…” he trailed off, his gaze out the window. “Oh. Oh no.” He clambered over Jack, onto the arm of the couch, and pressed his face against the window.

Jack pushed the dirty trainer out of his face and shifted to look at the devices hovering around the TARDIS, scanning it up and down, before they turned directly at the house.

“It’s the TARDIS. They think the TARDIS belongs to these people. And they’re not happy about it.” The Doctor whipped around. “Posie! Get them out of here!” Behind him, the three metal spheres started their charge.


	2. Chapter 2

Posie acted on instinct, jumping with the sudden sound of his voice and gathering her neighbors to their feet. The scream of shattering glass behind her only made them move faster. “Go downstairs, don’t wait for me. Meet the Johnsons, and tell them to stay away from the windows!”

Allie looked at her with scared, wide eyes before nodding and herding her husband down the stairs.

Posie turned on the spot and pulled in a breath. The Spheres were more interested in the Doctor than anyone else, as he waved his “screwdriver” in the air, emanating a shrill buzz and keeping the spheres from following Allie down the stairs. Jack had armed himself with a cricket bat off of Allie’s display from behind the couch, and she cringed as the hardwood hit one of the metal spheres with a loud _crack._ Posie grabbed a cast-iron pan form where it was hanging above the counter, and hoped to god her neighbors weren’t too attached to their possessions.

She released her breath at last, and rushed at one of the spheres that looked like it was going to try to sneak an attack against the Doctor. Her slippers made little purchase against the slick floors, however, and her swing ended up low as she slipped, only barely clipping the machine. It turned mid air, fixing her with a blue light that she hadn’t noticed, and she froze.

The light blinked red, but she didn’t get to see what that meant, when her whole vision was obscured by a flurry of a tan fabric and she was lifted off her feet. Once she could recognize what was happening, she was standing behind the Doctor, against the door. Where she had been before was on fire, and the ground was singed.

_Oh, wonderful. Lasers! Just what we need._

The little flame died underneath Jack’s boot as he ran towards them, slamming another sphere down. The one that had been hit before slowly swerved back into the air. They would not last long in here.

“We need to get to the TARDIS,” The Doctor yelled between changing the settings on his screwdriver to something even more ear-slaughtering. “Posie, what’s it like out there?”

She fumbled with the locks behind her, not wanting to take her eyes off of the lasers that were being fired around her and the big metal softball firing them. The air outside was hot, she could feel it against her back, warming her through her pyjamas. She spared a glance outside.

“It’s easing up,” she muttered, her eyes watering from the ash that seemed to linger in the air, despite there being nothing to burn. Nothing beside a strange wooden blue box, which seemed to have gotten lucky -- it was completely unscathed.

“We’re going to have to dash for it.” The Doctor boosted his screwdriver once more, causing the sphere to jerk upwards, the laser it had been charging missing his spiked fringe by a centimeter. “Jack! Ready?”

Jack slammed the bat into the already-disoriented sphere. “As I’ll ever be, Doctor!”

The Doctor backed up, one hand blindly grabbing at Posie’s and the other reaching into the pockets of his huge coat. After much too long searching, it emerged, long fingers now holding a small key instead of the silver screwdriver. He grinned at Posie as the spheres started to recover once more. “Let’s run, then!”

Posie scrambled after him as he took off out the door. She hadn’t noticed the sound inside, because the screwdriver had blocked out most other noise, but it was roaring, like fire all around her, which was reasonable for there really was fire all around her. Destruction dropped from the sky all around them, but she didn’t dare look, just kept her eyes on the square of the Doctor’s back.

It wasn’t long before they slammed into the blue box’s door. “Why are we going in here? It’s _wood.”_

“No, it’s not.” The Doctor turned the lock as quick as he could, shoving Jack and Posie in ahead of him and just barely dodging a ball of fire before tumbling in after them.

Posie fell to the ground, her hands just barely catching before she could slam her nose into the metal ground. Jack was yelling something about coattails, and Posie was vaguely aware of a commotion around her, but all she could really process was the blood rushing in her ears, her heart beating its way out of her chest, and strange sense of disorientation.

Because there really shouldn’t be room for her to be sprawled on the floor of that blue box.

She attempted to get to her feet gracefully, but all she managed was to shove herself off of the metal plates hard enough to flip over onto her back, and stare up at a massive, arcing ceiling, framed by strange, coral-like structures.

The Doctor’s face popped into her view, his long coat now shedded. “That was close, eh?”

She found herself unable to respond, but that didn’t bother him. He helped her to her feet with a grin, but she didn’t miss the sweat that slicked his brow.

Taking in the room in its entirety was almost enough to make her fall back down again. She caught herself on a railing, eyes wide as they tried to process the huge domed room, clearly meant to accommodate the weird machine in the center, that whirred and pulsed. The whole room filled with a green light, which spilled onto the brown and gold that made up the room that looked like a bizarre clash of organic and mechanic. Jack grinned at her from near the machine, where he was hanging up the Doctor’s coat on one of the corals, its tips singed.

“So, Posie, I should probably tell you. You were right, earlier. When you said we weren’t Amish.”

“Yeah,” she breathed. She looked to the Doctor, who was still smiling expectantly at her side. “What?”

“What do you think?”

“It’s bigger on the inside,” she commented. The Doctor’s grin only grew bigger, and she was afraid he might hurt something.

“Oh, I love it when they say that.” The Doctor twirled before rushing up the ramp, and Posie imagined it would’ve had more effect if he was still wearing his long coat. Immediately he took the deactivated sphere from Jack, and starting pulling wires and flicking switches all over the machine.

“Wait, wait, wait- where _are_ we?” She clambered after the Doctor, panic still making her weak on her feet.

“You, Posie, are in my time machine! Well, it’s more than that, really, it’s a TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. Can, theoretically, take us to any point in time and space.”

She blinked at him. “You’re from the future?”

Something sparked in front of the Doctor, and he jumped back in time to a snicker from Jack, seated in an old chair across the way. “Am I? I really don’t know. Time’s pretty relative, but you said it was 2018, right?”

“Last I checked, yeah.”

“Then why does this say otherwise?” The Doctor pushed her way a monitor, one of the few things on the console she could recognize. “They’re our location, in time and space, based on the current human database.”

“That’s impossible. It’s not 5302! It’s 2018. Your machine must be broken.” She pushed the display back at the Doctor, looking just in time to catch a sour look from him.

“She’s not, and I’m sure she takes offence to that.” He tapped the screen with two long fingers. “Weirder yet, however, is that the humans have no data on this planet’s location. According to them, it’s just empty space.”

“But it’s Earth! We’re on Earth -- and I’m human!”

The Doctor pursed his lips. “You’re right, you do smell human. But it’s the 52nd century, humans are all over the place.” The Doctor was already onto the next thought, hooking up bits to the sphere and scanning it over with his screwdriver.

“But, Doctor, it’s not the 52nd…” she trailed off, recognizing he was not listening. She clutched at her torso, feeling suddenly nauseous, and moved to sit on the floor next to Jack.

“Hey,” Jack said carefully. She spared him a sideways glance, noting his overly-dazzling grin. She grunted in response. “There’s space on the seat for two, by the way.”

 _“Jack.”_ The Doctor’s response seemed almost automatic.

Posie seated herself in the chair, trying her best not to press against Jack. “What’s he-”

“Don’t worry about it,” he chuckled. His expression hardened slightly after looking her over. “You doing alright?”

“I just nearly died, I’m in a time machine that defies every law of physics I’ve been taught, and I just learned that my whole world is a lie.” She hugged herself a little tighter. “I could be worse.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. You get used to that kinda thing with him. I’m sorry about it, though, if that helps at all.”

She hummed in response, not knowing how to respond, but she was pardoned from having to come up with something by an excited exclamation from the Doctor. “Got something! There’s another time traveler in the area. Small world, eh?” He turned to them with that same grin. Then he threw a lever, and the whole room lurched with the momentum of the ship taking off.

Posie grabbed the seat of the chair and grit her teeth, as the Doctor danced around the console, flicking switches and pressing buttons. “Why don’t you guys have seatbelts in this thing?” she asked, but her voice was drowned out by the wheezing of the engines.

Jack was better at timing his questions with the roar of travel. “Doctor, where are we going?”

“I’ve caught their scent! Got a whiff of their trail. Picked up their stink... you know what I mean. Let’s see when they’re going, eh?” He put the finishing touches on his routine, and the shaking grew worse for a moment before the whole thing finally settled down. Without a moment’s hesitation, the Doctor twirled in place and hopped to the door.

Jack stood to accompany him, but Posie was less eager. “Wait, wait. What’s out there?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Dunno! Much more fun that way.”

“Fun?” She jumped from the seat. “I nearly just died, and all you’re thinking about is having fun?”

The Doctor, for just a rare moment, was speechless. “Ah, well, that’s my life, isn’t it? Nearly dying? I’ve got to have fun at some point.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But, yes, you’re right. We dragged you into this, didn’t we? Are you doing alright? You can wait here if you want. Anything dangerous out there couldn’t break down those doors.”

She stared at him for a moment, and his dark eyes stared right back.

“But,” he continued, and she knew he couldn’t have been finished, “there really could be _anything_ out that door. I mean, obviously, some things are more likely than others, but whatever it is, it’s beyond anything you’ve ever seen in your life. And you could see it. But you know the risks.”

She chewed her lip, looking at the white doors nervously. “I’m in my pyjamas.”

“I’ve worn weirder in stranger places.”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “I bet you have.” She glanced at Jack, who flashed her that patented grin she was already used to. “Let’s do this, then.” The Doctor grinned, and gestured for her to lead the way. She walked up to the doors, her hand gripping the metal handle as gently as possible, and opened them to a new world.

And was immediately looking down the shaft of an arrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a little shorter than im used to, but it felt like the most natural break i was gonna get for awhile [shrug]
> 
> find me on tumblr @doctormarz

**Author's Note:**

> my first doctor who fic... im going for just a genfic, maybe some tenjack if you squint, but i just want to tell a story! so hopefully this'll feel a bit like a novel but with stories more the length of the comics.
> 
> ah.. that's enough rambling for now. find me on tumblr at @doctormarz


End file.
